The Leonid Meteor shower will lighten the sky tonight, so keep your eyes open and please avoid going to bed. We can expect some beautiful shooting stars, resulting from the debris of comet 55P-Tempel-Tuttle.

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Dear colleagues,

We would like to bring your attention to a special session at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Seismological Society of America (17-19 April, 2012, San Diego, California):”Earthquakes and Tsunamis at Coastal Archaeological Sites”.

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Dear colleagues,

We would like to bring your attention to a special session at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Seismological Society of America (17-19 April, 2012, San Diego, California): “Macroseismic Effects in Recent and Ancient Earthquakes and their Relationship to Ground Motion Parameters”. more

Emil Wiechert was born 150 years ago (26 December 1861). He not only invented modern Geophysics and Seismology, but he also had the first chair of Geophysics worldwide (1898 in Göttingen, Germany). Wiechert became famous for his seismograph. Now the Deutsche Post released a special stamp showing Wiechert, his seismograph and the original seismogram of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake as registered in Göttingen, Germany!

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Some preliminary results regarding geological, engineering and social aspects from the Van Mw 7.2 earthquake (23 October 2011) in Eastern Turkey from Prof. Lekkas and Prof. Karydis visit to the site. Have a look at the following link:
http://www.elekkas.gr/el/research/missions/turkey-mission.html

A series of earthquakes has hit Oklahoma, with a M5.6 being the strongest one. The main quake was preceeded by a M4.8 and several smaller ones. A number of aftershocks took place, some of them stronger than M3.0. The epicentre was situated close to Prague about 50 km west of Oklahoma City. All quakes occured in very shallow depth (< 10 km). No injuries have been reported so far, but it seems that some minor damage occured. Quakes of this strength can be felt over hundreds of kilometers in central and eastern US.

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The Geological Survey of India released a report on earthquake-triggered landslides following the M6.9 Sikkim Earthquake, 18 September 2011. A total of 210 landslides has been reported. That’s earthquake environmental effects!

A special issue on the Christchurch Earthquake has been published in Seismological Research Letters. That’s maybe something I should blog about in greater detail later, so here’s the news and the link only.

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The Royal Society of London ‘for Improving Natural Knowledge’, the world’s oldest scientific publisher, made its journal archive permanently free to access online. The first edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society appeared in 1665. Now, the archive contains more than 60000 papers. Here are the links to the press news and to the searchable archive.

Among the many papers of potential interest, I found the following two: “Observations on the parallel roads of Glen Roy, and other parts of Lochaber in Scotland, with an attempt to prove that they are of marine origin“, by a rather young Charles Darwin (1839) and “On the small vertical movements of a stone laid on the surface of the ground” (1901), where 2 mm/y “subsidence” was found through a smart and accurate mechanical approach (at least till when the stone disappeared). I stop here to not ruin your curiosity, but you can read more.

The Turkey M7.2 earthquake turned out to be a really desastrous event. More than 500 people died, more than 2,000 houses were destroyed. Currently, international aid is reaching the epicentral area. Chris Rowan has a good article on the geological background (an earlier one here), History of Geology discusses the paleoseismicity of that region. The German Aerospace Agency (DLR) prepared some quick response maps for the Van and Ercis areas. Nice work!

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Update: According to a press release from Bogazici University, intensities reached VIII. They also claim a depth of 5 km only. 138 people died, 350 were wounded and 970 buildings collapsed.

An earthquake with a magnitude of Mw 7.2 (EMSC: Mw 7.3) occured in Eastern Tureky in a depth of 10 – 20 km. The epicentre was situated close to the city of Van. More than 30 houses collapsed according to first reports. Despite only several dozens of people have been confirmed dead until now, the earthquake could have caused hundreds of fatalities. Surprisingly, the quake did neither happen at the North Anatolian Fault Zone nor at the East Anatolian Fault Zone. Those two strike slip systems are considered as the most dangerous faults in Turkey. The Van area lies in a broad zone of convergent movement of the Arabian plate vs. Eurasia, and mapped faults are in concordance with the oblique thrust mechanism observed at the 23 October 2011 event. Convergence rate is in the order of 25 mm/a there. more